• Rose In The Dark • (GxG)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Omniscient

"Do you feel like you know when all of this started?" the woman asked. "When you started to see your appearance and food differently?"

Sighing on the inside, Milan let her head fall, her eyes finding her fidgeting fingers in her lap.

"When I was ten... and had gained weight while taking ballet."

She didn't need to look up to know that the woman was writing something down on her notepad. "Okay, and can you recall just how you felt then?"

Lifting her head at that, Milan tried strengthening her posture and stilling her hands. "When? At the beginning, or afterwards?"

"How about both," Dr. Madison answered softly.

"Um," a long breath escaped her nose with the trailing down of her eyes. "I've been a stress eater for as long as I've known, so I guess it started there," she began, thinking back on it all. "Kids would say mean things or give looks, and when I'd mess up I'd get that same treatment from my instructor as well, so.... When I got home, I would eat... In the middle of the night usually, because if my mother saw she would scold me for it too, but it was the only thing that seemed to ease me at the time. The only thing that managed to take off some of the pressure, and I liked the comfort that it gave me..."

Amidst her pause, her therapist remained quiet, implying her diligence to listen and allow Milan to let everything on her chest, off.

"Once those consequences started to show physically," Milan continued after a long moment, her voice level. "People started commenting on my body, saying that no ballerina would ever be my chubby size and that I should lay off all the snacks... And it wasn't just them, it was my instructor too, and my mother... Next thing I knew, I hated food in my middle school years," she uttered, her brows knitting with those words. "I hated eating, especially in front of anyone.... I would practice more, for hours on end, just so that I would stop thinking about food. And I wouldn't stop until the hunger subsided."

Her heart was thudding in her chest, no matter how many times she tried reminding herself that this was good for her.

She had done it before, this being her second time, going down this road of memory lane. Feeling and processing emotions that she wanted nothing more than to simply bury. Forever.

"My mother always taught us how important image was," she continued again, trying her best to just breathe. "Especially with her and my father being immigrants, she valued reputation and presentation, no matter how hard things got or how crappy any of us felt inside... When I was tired from school and dance, she would tell me to keep going, and that it was just all in my head. When I gained any weight she would make sure to let me know, and let me know to fix it. When I got a bad grade- even a B or an A minus- everything was taken away. And when I made a mistake in a performance, I wouldn't hear the end of it until the next performance was flawless."

Dr. Madison nodded, her hand moving a pen across her notepad as she took in everything being told to her, with both understanding and compassion.

"By the time high school rolled around, I had gotten really good. At dance, at school, and at hiding how much I hated my body and hated food. Because while it was a bad thing to be fat it was just as bad a thing to show what you were doing to not be fat." Rolling her eyes up at the ceiling, a sigh eluded Milan. "It was negative and negative was bad for my image as well as my mother's too. 'What would people say if they found out her teenage daughter was starving herself,'" her fingers made air quotes. "But, I wanted so badly to please her and prove to her that I could handle it all without falling apart... I wanted to prove to her that I could juggle everything just as good as my sister and that I wouldn't be the child to disappoint her and our family, like she thought."